1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to wire reels and more particularly to a reel for winding up or paying out a strand of fence wire, such as barbed wire.
When disassembling a stock enclosing fence, such as a barbed wire fence formed by a plurality of strands of barbed wire, it has been common practice to manually roll up each individual wire strand after removing it from the posts by forming a coil, approximately one meter in diameter, by one end portion of the wire strand and thereafter rolling this coil in a winding up action of the wire as by rolling it along the surface of the earth toward the other end of the wire strand. This action is generally satisfactory but has the disadvantage that heavy weight leather gloves must be worn as a protection for the hands against the barbs of the wire and is time consuming in that the roll of wire progressively increases in mass and care must be exercised in the winding up action to insure juxtaposition of the wire convolutions so that the reel forms a tire-like coil.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior patents, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 325,394; 2,644,650; 3,134,558 and 3,584,809, generally disclose reels or containers for receiving coils of wire or rope for paying out the strand and preventing entanglement of the convolutions thereof during the paying out action.
This invention provides a wire reel frame which may be moved along a strand of wire disposed on the surface of the earth for progressively winding the wire thereon by rotation of the reel about its hub axis or which may be supported and manually rotated for drawing the wire to the reel in a winding up action of the wire around the periphery of the reel.